Pico USB scope for ARM systems

Pico Technology has announced the beta release of drivers for its PicoScope oscilloscopes to run on ARM-based BeagleBone Black and Raspberry Pi development systems. The drivers consist of a specialized armhf build for RaspberryPi under control of Raspbian and a more general amrhf build for use with BeagleBoneBlack (cortex-A8 based devices) under control of Debian.

This Beta release comes with a number of caveats; the developers make clear that they have taken every care to ensure that as many of the driver features as possible have been implemented but they may not work in all cases. They also state that most of the embedded systems will be running below the recommended systems requirements for the drivers so that on some occasions, when the system is busy the driver will not have enough resources to process the data which may result in the internal watchdog kicking-in causing the device to be dropped or the application to hang. They also suggest powering the system via a USB hub to avoid the chances of power surges, fuse blowing and damage to the port.

All in all this sounds like a download for more advanced tinkerers. It is also suggested that the drivers may work on other platforms but they will not offer support for these implementations. Check out the Pico Technology support for more information.